South America > Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is
generally an easy city to get to know and to make friends with.

The layout itself is
very welcoming with wide avenues and lots of trees, parks and small plazas that
beg of you to come and sit and have a break. The public transportation is
efficient and dirt cheap – the subte is definitely the way to go. But if you
need to move around after 22:30 there are a million different busses.

As you read
everywhere the city is very European looking with old beautiful buildings
reminiscent of France. As they are very old you sometimes overlook it though as
many have decayed quite a bit. But then again many are still standing strong
and are often painted in beautiful and/or strong colors.

One of the most eye
catching elements is the often very ornamental decoration abundant on shops and
restaurants throughout the city; everywhere you see intricate old school hand
painted signs and decorations. Even on the busses.

It enhances the feeling
of vintage which is definitely strongest in the neighborhood of San Telmo. Here
you find a wealth of antiques shops, small cafés full of locals wearing
suspenders and cardigans, parrilladas serving excellent grilled meat at great
value and bars with live local music every night. But also more trendy cafes
and bars with young alternative people. The atmosphere is relaxed and you can
end up spending quite some time just drinking coffee and eating medialunas (a slightly
more bready version of a crossaint) in the small cafes.

Our local regular cafe - great for coffee and medialunas!

San Telmo is also
where you can find the classic outdoor tango shows. These I feel a rather ambiguous
about. On one hand the tango is mesmerizing and very impressive. But it is
difficult not to get a feeling of it being just a tourist trap. Especially
after having been in the neighborhood La Boca!

The tourist part of
Boca consist of roughly 5 small connected streets full of nothing but tourist
shops full of either soccer or tango related merchandize. A million people with
cameras get dumped there by busses every minute. Someone is constantly trying to get you to
eat overprized food and old men line up to have pictures taken of them with
young women in tango dresses swirled around them in a tango pose.

This is not pleasant
in any way. But the worst part about it is walking through the actual barrio of
Boca and seeing how the area suddenly changes from a huge run down barrio where
it is advised not to go at night for tourists to 5 streets of tourist hell. The
tourist part of Boca is like a snow globe. It is a tiny world that has nothing
to do with reality and the dreams it conveys are made of cheap plastic.

I sincerely hope that
there is a vibrant underground authentic tango scene hidden somewhere from the
surface to balance all this out.

One of the areas we
spent most time in was Palermo. If San Telmo feels like old Europe Palermo
reeks of new Europe. The subdivisions of this barrio are called Soho and
Hollywood, and it is much like going around a cool fashion area of a European
capital. There are a million shops, restaurants and clubs. It is gourmet, its cool,
its handmade and high fashion and the average age is probably 20 years younger
than in San Telmo.

It feels a little bland
though to travel to the other side of the globe to feel like you could be back
in Copenhagen again. But at night Palermo turns up the charm when the cafes and
restaurants light up the streets and fill up with people eating and drinking
way into the hot night. Then you feel far from home again.

But none of this is
why we were there so much. Palermo and the neighboring barrios are the places to
go for painting in the street. It already has a lot of artwork in the streets
and a lot of shop facades are completely covered by local and foreign artists.

There was an
abundance of small spots to paint. And to our luck the waste management system
is not the best leaving small piles of trash on many street corners which made
it surprisingly easy to find a bucket or crate or even the dumpsters itself to reach
higher when painting. It was also a good food source for the many street dogs
around.

When painting, people
were in worst case uninterested but many stopped to have a look or take photos.
They seemed to be quite used to the idea of people painting randomly in this
area. As the sun was out most of the time it was pretty chilled - although
disturbed for a bit by a fall from a dumpster.

Contrary to widespread
belief that it is not legal, which was demonstrated when we were politely told by
a police officer to please stop painting in a park near Independencia Subte
station.

The metro or Subte is
generally the place with the most paint in Bueos Aires. Not on the actual
station but on the trains! Coming from a country where painting on trains can
result in fines in amounts that could buy you a flat in Copenhagen, it is quite
extreme to see that probably 90% of the trains are covered in graffiti. And not
just 90% of the number of trains but of the actual outside of all the trains we
took.

An area I would have
liked to see more of was Almagro. This area seemed to have a cool vibe and less
touristed than other areas we were in.

We went there to see
an electro cumbia concert with El Remolon at a venue call Ciudad Cultural Konex.
The venue was super cool! It was an old industrial complex with a big open stage
in the yard and a smaller stage in one of the buildings, but the building was
open one one end and led to a bar. They only served 2 different drinks – vodka/red
bull and the argentine favorite (which taste a lot of cough syrup) fernet/coke
- but then you get plastic cups with 1 liter of it for 50 pesos (roughly 55 kr)!!!

The venue served food
- a concept all Danish venues should adopt! We went for the street food sold by
a local guy out of a flamenco box outside instead, and it was awesome! The street
food is generally very good here, although you get enough of empanadas after a
few days.

Buenos Aires is a cool
place to be for Argentineans and for Europeans alike - maybe this is why we randomly
ran into old friends from Ireland here! Thank you so much for the homemade
meals and the company!